Dropsonic
Insects With Angel Wings (2005)
Jordan Rogowski
In doing a bit of research and background checking on Dropsonic, one name kept popping up in everything I found.
Led Zeppelin.
What? Zeppelin are undoubtedly one of those "if you're name dropping them, you had better be bringing your 'A' game bands," and in that right, I really can't be too disappointed with the band. Channeling blues and classic rock into their sound, Dropsonic rollick and motor through fifty minutes of wild guitar solos, yearning vocals, and thick chord progressions. It's not an original venture in the slightest, but that's a lot of what makes the band's efforts so endearing. To place them alongside a contemporary band, because we all know a review's nothing minus comparison, I'd say they fit the roll of a more aggressive, more volatile Our Lady Peace. Their concise but sonically diverse assault never, for even a minute, relents. Even the final track, done acoustically, which I'll touch on later, maintains a certain level of intensity that's hard to come by without the use of electric guitars.
While some of the jagged riffing and vocal wailing can be thought of as channeling Zeppelin, largely, the songs bear no resemblance. Robert Plant's voice has always been distinct and immediately identifiable, Jimmy Page's squally guitar a beacon heard miles around, Bonham's drumming the most sturdy of anchors, but no individual member of Dropsonic has that level of gravitas. The twang at the beginning of "Rotten Luck" is the kind of thing the band needs more of. Something immediately identifiable, something to grab the listener's attention, so they know within the first two seconds of the song just what they're listening to. "Everyone's a Stranger" has an extremely evident attitude to it, a tried and true rockân'roll swagger. The one thing that ties every song together, besides that swagger, is that they're all based on amazing rhythms. Driving, jagged rhythms that start, stutter, stop, and start again while letting the vocals coarsely slide on top. Cohesion or not, there's a fair bit of contrast to some of the pacing in this album as well. Slow, twangy Southern rocker "My Girl" is the stark opposite of the following track, the almost 8-minute journey that is "Headless." A low-key effort by comparison, but at no point did I lose interest. The solid tracks keep on coming though, with "When You Die" coming directly after, a song in which the singer sounds extremely unstable, and it makes for a really great band dichotomy.
"Insane," a slow, brooding acoustic song closes the album out in fine form. While they've forgone the rock assault, there's still the sound of danger and unrest in the singer's voice. Mellow as it may appear, you still get the inclination that he could fly off the handle without a moment's notice, and that really helps out the song, just making for a much more interesting trip. The slowly plucked acoustic strings give off a very morose, haunting vibe that perfectly suits the vocals and the lyrics they stem from.
This album definitely caught me by surprise, as I was expecting some K-ROQ bullshit, but found instead an album brimming with energy in the spirit of one of the greatest bands ever to play.